392 Beggars. Attempts at evasion 



of a widespread evil, but no remedy. Repeated legislation to the same 

 purpose only recorded and continued the failure. When all the resources 

 of evasion were exhausted, the pauperized serf fled to a town and 

 depended for a living on the pitiful doles of private or ecclesiastical 

 charity, or turned brigand and took precarious toll of those who still 

 had something to lose. In either case he was an additional burden on 

 a society that already had more than it could bear. In 382 we find an 

 attempt 1 made to put down ' sturdy beggars.' The law rewarded any- 

 one who procured the conviction of such persons by handing over the 

 offenders to him. An ex-slave became the approver's own slave, and 

 one who had nothing of his own beyond his freeborn quality was granted 

 to him as his colonus for life. But this law seems to have been ineffectual 

 like others. Desertion of farms might to some extent be checked, but 

 mendicity and brigandage remained. 



There was however another movement, later in time and less in 

 volume, but not less serious as affecting the practical working of the 

 imperial machine. With the increase of poverty life in municipal towns 

 became less attractive. Local eminence was no longer an object of 

 ambition ; for to local burdens, once cheerfully borne, was now added 

 a load of imperial responsibilities which lay heavy on all men of property, 

 and which they could neither shake off nor control. In hope of evading 

 them, well-to-do citizens took refuge 2 in the country, either on estates 

 of their own or under the protection of great landlords already settled 

 there. But to allow this would mean the depletion of the local senates 

 (curiae) on whose services as revenue-collectors the financial system of 

 the empire depended. To prevent men qualified for the position of 

 curiales from escaping that duty was the aim of legislation 3 which by 

 repeated enactments confessed its own failure. That there were country 

 magnates, men of influence (potentes), whose protection might seem 

 able to screen municipal defaulters, is a point to be noted. They were 

 the great possessores* (a term no longer applied to small men), who 

 held large estates organized on a sort of manorial model, and some- 

 times ruled them like little principalities, territorial lordships 5 standing 

 in direct relations with the central authorities and not hampered by 

 inclusion in the general municipal scheme. Such 'peculiars' had existed 

 under the earlier Empire, and evidently continued to exist : the Crown- 



1 Cod Th Xiv 18 de mcndicantibus non invalidis. 



2 If I rightly interpret Dig L 5 i a (Ulpian) cases had occurred earlier of men liable to 

 office even pretending to be mere coloni in order to evade liability (ad colonos praediorum se 

 transtulerunt. See Dirksen under transferrt). 



3 Very significant is the law cod Th xvi 5 48 (410) by which even heretics are held to 

 curial duty. 



4 See Seeck, Schatzungsordnung pp 315-6, De Coulanges p 119. 



5 See Weber, Agrargeschichte pp 266-7. 



